Conservationists Replanting Poached Venus Flytraps In NC

Wilmington, NC -- Conservation advocates are replanting more than 1,000 venus flytraps in southeast North Carolina that were recovered over the past year from poaching.

Staff and volunteers with the Nature Conservancy will replant the flytraps and about 500 pitcher plants in Green Swamp Preserve on Tuesday.

Venus flytraps grow naturally only within a hundred miles of the Carolinas coast, but the carnivorous plant's populations have been disappearing amid development, human encroachment and poaching.

An Associated Press review of state botany records last year found that nearly 80% of the 117 identified wild populations of flytraps in North Carolina have little chance of surviving, have already been wiped out or haven't been seen in years.